A great variety of devices have been developed to dispense air-treating vapors. A number of the recent inventions in this field include a liquid air-treating composition in an enclosure all or part of which is formed of a polymeric material (such as film) through which the air-treating composition can migrate to be released as a vapor at an outer surface. Use of such a permeable polymeric material controls the dispensing of air-treating vapors and tends to eliminate great variations in the rate of dispensing over the life of the product. Such products are considered advantageous in this regard when compared with the many air-treating products for which the rate of vapor release drops dramatically over the life of the product.
When such enclosures are in the form of flexible plastic bags containing liquid or other flowable material, as disclosed, for example, in PCT Publications No. WO 82/02700, the rate of vapor-dispensing will vary as the area of contact between the contained liquid and the inner surface of its enclosure varies. Pooling of the liquid at the enclosure bottom, as can often occur depending on the orientation of the enclosure, can substantially reduce the dispensing rate. The rate of vapor-dispensing is significantly increased and will remain very steady over the life of the product when the liquid is in contact with all or nearly all of the inner surface of the enclosure.
This problem is specifically pointed out in U.S. Pat. No. 4,130,245 (Bryson), entitled "Liquid Dispensing Package." See, for example, column 1, lines 23-40. The Bryson patent attempts to solve this problem by dividing the flexible plastic bag into a plurality of small chambers such that the liquid will not pool primarily in one location. While this approach may have some advantages for certain types of packages, it cannot readily be used when the flexible dispensing bag is of the type having a single chamber which encloses a smaller burstable inner storage container filled with an air-treating liquid composition to be released into the flexible dispensing bag upon bursting, as is shown in FIG. 1 of PCT Publication No. WO 82/02700.
The Bryson invention is not applicable to the problem of uneven dispensing for flexible dispensing bags of the type shown herein. There is a need for a device to improve the distribution of a liquid air-treating composition within a flexible enclosure of the type having a single dispensing chamber, in order that the full advantages of dispensing by permeation through polymeric materials can be realized.
There is a need for an improved device for supporting a flexible plastic pouch for dispensing air-treating vapors from a contained liquid. Such improved device should serve to isolate the pouch away from finished furniture surfaces which would be attacked by the dispensed composition, and also to eliminate the need for human contact with such pouch while allowing good air circulation against the pouch and easy visual inspection to determine when the pouch is empty.